Still, these court challenges are not necessarily indicative of the University-Wide Committee’s stability, said Miltenberg, the lawyer who has defended dozens of students accused of sexual misconduct. … As conversations about sexual assault on college campuses reach broader audiences, universities have found themselves under increasing pressure to deliver guilty verdicts, Miltenberg argued. This results in a high frequency of cases in which universities find students responsible for sexual misconduct yet hand down light sanctions, such as one- or two-semester suspensions — an approach he described as “risk management.” … “Every school could benefit from more diligent, expansive, deliberate procedures and more trained or better-trained investigators and hearing panel members,” Miltenberg said. “Yale can as well. But as long as this continues to be such a polarizing issue you can’t discount the political pressures a university is under to deal with these cases in a way that minimizes their risk.”

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